6. "_The multiple standard is not ideal. Especially is it faulty when the cause of price movements is entirely a matter of the abundance or scarcity of goods in general._" Those who hold this objection point out that an ideal standard would not be one which always smooths out the price level but one which discriminates and leaves unchanged such rises and falls as are due to general scarcity and abundance of goods. There is much to be said in favor of such discrimination as an ideal. It must be admitted that the compensated dollar plan would not discriminate between changes in the price level due to the scarcity or abundance of goods in general and those due to changes in money and credit. It must be further admitted that a theoretically ideal standard would take some account of this distinction. But the compensated dollar plan does not claim to be ideal. The plan would simply correct the gold standard to make it conform to a multiple commodity standard. It does not pretend to correct the multiple commodity standard to make it conform to some "absolute" standard of value. Such an ideal standard is as unattainable as is absolute space. Changes in relative value indicate change in absolute value, either of goods or of money; but it is not possible for us to know, except in a general way, how much of the absolute change is in goods and how much in the dollar. On general principles we may be assured that the absolute change is wholly or mostly in the dollar. We economists in our measurements of value are in much the same predicament as the astronomers. Our economical "fixed stars" are fixed only in a relative sense. We cannot measure the empty spaces of absolute value, but can only express values in terms of visible goods, the general average of which is the nearest approach to absolute invariability we can, in practice, reach. But if it were possible to measure absolute values to our universal satisfaction, in terms, say, of "marginal utility," or of "disutility of labor," or of anything else, there are no statistics by which we can realize such a standard in practice. The only readily available statistics by which we can correct our present standard are price statistics from the great markets. We can, by index numbers based on these price statistics, translate from gold into commodities, but as yet we cannot translate from commodities into any ideal or absolute standard.